On being a girl

If I ever find the guy (and you KNOW it has to be a guy) that's behind the insanity that is the "Have a happy period" marking campaign for Always, I will push him down a huge flight of stairs and not even wait around to hear his body hit the ground.

Seriously...have a happy period? Who says that? What about a period is happy, I ask you? Unless you're praying to the bleedin' gods that you're not pregnant, and in that case the message should be more along the lines of "Congrats! Here's your get out of jail free card. Next time be more careful".

But I guess that won't sell maxi pads, eh? And it takes up an awful lot of room on the protective sticker thingie.

No, nothing about having a period is happy. You're crampy, you're tired, you're irritable, and oh yeah - you're bleeding for five straight days. In my case, I'm all these things. And, I'm also not pregnant. Happy period, my ass.

Funny how our emotions can ebb and flow much like the cycles themselves. Because of my PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) I don't get regular periods - never have. I'd go up to nine months at a time without one. And it was bliss, kinda. I mean, at the time I wasn't looking for a tenant in my womb, so I was completely content to let it sit vacant and cobweb over a bit until I needed the place. I knew something wasn't quite right, but for the time being there was no need to do anything about it.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm desperate for good ole Aunt Flo to show up at my front door, asking to be let in. Month after month she wouldn't show, so finally I had to get the good doctors to give her a little push until she'd begrudgingly make her appearance. Jagger was really on to something with that whole 'you can't always get what you want' thing. Sigh.

Fast forward a bit further, and we find ourselves at present day. Thanks to the jumbo sized cocktail of drugs partying it up in my bloodstream, I seem to be surfing the crimson wave with much greater regularity. And I gotta tell ya - it sucks.

Not that I'm telling the vast majority of you something you don't already know. How you go through this every 28 days (give or take) is beyond me. Or at least it has been, but now I'm actually becoming one of you, living this insanity month in and month out. That's right - I've actually had three periods in the past three months. Is it insane to say that's never happened to be me before in my entire life? And did I mention I'm going to be 34 next week?

WTF?

And no, just for the record and in case you couldn't tell, I'm not having a happy period. I'm having a grumpy, crampy, someone's-taking-a-melon-baller-to-my-insides, get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face period.

Take that, Always. And marketing dude - I suggest you rethink your campaign. Either that, or stay the hell away from me. And stairs.

And that's your daily dash. How's your diva doin'?